A few weeks back, I wrote a blog about getting rid of things and the meaning we have attached to what we are trying to get rid of. This past weekend, I was inspired to clean out old baby clothes. What I learned was that I had more emotional attachment to my baby’s clothes than I had expected. As I started to go through the boxes, I would see the outfits and memories would come back from when he was wearing those clothes. From his first outfit coming home to his first swim to what he wore the day he turned 1. As I started to go through the boxes, it got harder and harder to give things away! I even thought about the article that I wrote about how hard it was to give things away! So, I had to come up with a plan that worked for me because the clothes had to go. For the clothes that were easy to purge, I donated them to a neighbourhood family. For those that were more difficult, I gave them to a good friend. For me, having them go to a child that I can see make new memories, allows me to let go of them more easily.How do you give away things that you have attachments to? Share your tips in the comments below.

Some people create goals or resolutions and then forget about them. How can they come true if they aren’t in your consciousness?Remember that success and failure are both choices. In fact, they are made up of many choices along our way. We don’t become overweight because of one bad food choice. We become overweight by many poor choices, repeated over again.You need to choose to take action on your goals. Over and over again until you achieve your desired results. Here are some ways to keep your goals at the top of your mind

Keep a copy of your goals in your daily journal, that way, you can see them each day

Our family has written out the goals on a white board and placed it in our kids play area, that way, we can read them while playing with our child. We also see this each time we go into that room.

Use washable markers to write them on your bathroom mirror

One year, I laminated a copy of my goals to read in my morning shower

You can voice record your goals onto your phone and play them on your morning drive or at night before you go to bed

Read your goals while you’re having your morning breakfast

Find an accountability buddy and e-mail them when you take action steps toward your goals

The more you put your goals in the forefront of your mind, the easier it will be to manifest them. What are some things you do?​

Due to our different life experiences, we have all come to our own unique ways in which we see the world. In our personal relationships, wouldn’t it be important to know how you and your partner experience love?My partner and I took this test (https://www.5lovelanguages.com/) which gave us an idea on what we value and what acts of kindness mean love to us.For him, words of affirmation were meaningful to him, whereas for myself, acts of service. With words of affirmation:Actions don't always speak louder than words. If this is your love language, unsolicited compliments mean the world to you. Hearing the words, "I love you," are important – hearing the reasons behind that love sends your spirits skyward. Insults can leave you shattered and are not easily forgotten. Kind, encouraging, and positive words are truly life-giving.With acts of service:Can vacuuming the floors really be an expression of love? Absolutely! Anything you do to ease the burden of responsibilities weighing on an "Acts of Service" person will speak volumes. The words he or she most want to hear: "Let me do that for you." Laziness, broken commitments, and making more work for them tell speakers of this language their feelings don't matter. Finding ways to serve speaks volumes to the recipient of these acts.You can read more of the other communication styles through the link posted above.What I learned was to tell my partner more often in words, how important he is to me. Once I learned to verbalize my appreciation more, our communication improved. I learned that I was doing acts of service for him and was getting frustrated that they were not appreciated as much as I would have if they were done for me. This caused me to be frustrated. This was a great lesson on how the same experience can mean something different to someone else. Take the love languages quiz. What do you value?

The more I observe my child, the more life lessons I learn. My child loves to swim and splash around in water. He goes to weekly lessons and due to the holidays, they were cancelled so we decided to take him swimming on our own. In order for us to do this, we had to put him down a little earlier for his nap….he did not like this one bit. He fought and fought and fought and after an hour, finally fell asleep. Luckily, we were still able to fit swimming in when he woke up.Now, what did I learn from this?

Sometimes the universe has good things planned for us (i.e. taking us swimming) but we are so focused on what we don’t want to do in the moment (i.e. take a nap) that we don’t know we are getting what we want later

It is really hard to ‘force’ someone who is determined to do what you want (ie.e take a nap), even if you want to. Better to go with the bodies’ down rhythms and patterns.

Express your emotions! When my child does not want to go to bed, he does not hold his emotions in. He doesn’t try to hide behind a smile or run away and cry when no one is around...he yells, screams and cries. You know when he is upset. When he’s done expressing his emotions, he calms down and is back to his regular self. How often have you held in emotions only to have it come out or explode at the wrong time? Learning to express our emotions in the moment will save our body, down the road.

Live in the moment. Kids don’t live in the future, they live in the now. They react to the now. There is no faking with a young child, they will express their emotions in the present moment.

Savour the sweet moments. It was not pleasant having a baby scream when going down for his nap but...when he did calm down, he reached out for my hand and then fell asleep holding my hand. I could live in that moment forever.

What are some life lessons that your children have taught you? Comment below.​

They say that growth happens when you get outside of your comfort zones. One way to grow is to challenge your fears and put yourself in situations that make you a little (or alot) uncomfortable so that you can stretch.If you fear public speaking, you could challenge that fear. Scared of heights? Keep putting yourself in higher and higher (but still safe) areas. You can also grow by having the difficult or uncomfortable discussions with others. When dealing with people who have different values, life experiences and beliefs than you, it can be easy to find situations where you get uncomfortable. You can pause and recognize a discussion as an opportunity for growth or you can run away and avoid them all together. Unfortunately, most people tend to avoid being uncomfortable. Lucky for me, I’m working on getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.I had to have an uncomfortable discussion with my husband a while back and I was able to observe by body’s reactions to this situation. Once I knew I had to talk to him, I could feel my heart beating faster, hands getting clammy...in short I was observing my body kick into fight or flight. At the same time, I could tell that my body was reacting not only to the present moment but to something in the past. Once I realized that, I took deep breaths and calmed myself down. When I heard the garage door open, my heart skipped a beat. Again, I had to calm myself. When I actually got out what I had to say, it wasn’t as bad as I had built it up to be! It never is! We resolved the issue and made things even better than before. Whatever conversations it is that you find hard, whether they be finances, health issues, relationships issues, or just telling someone bad news….take it as an opportunity to grow. In the end, the waiting to talk is usually worse than the actual conversation itself.Go out there and have those uncomfortable conversations and each time you have one, remember that you are growing a little more. In search of a supportive community? Come to our monthly workshops. 613-761-1600​

I was trying to figure out what to write in my blog this week when I came across an article that spoke to me.

To those of you who wonder why you go through what you have gone through in your life….this is for you.

Gracefully Broken! ❤

I was in Dollar Tree last night, and there was a lady and two kids behind me in the LONG line.

One was a big kid, and the other one was a toddler. The bigger one had a pack of glow sticks, and the toddler was screaming for them.

The Mom opened the pack and gave him one which stopped his tears. He walked around with it smiling; but then the bigger boy took it, and the toddler started screaming again.

Just as the Mom was about to fuss, the older child bent the glow stick and handed it back to the toddler. As we walked outside at the same time, the toddler noticed that the stick was now glowing; and his brother said, "I had to break it so that you could get the full effect from it."

I almost ran, because l could hear Creator saying to me, "I had to break you to show you why I created you. You had to go through it so you could fulfill your purpose."

That precious child was happy just swinging that "unbroken" glow stick around in the air, because he didn't understand what it was created to do - which was "glow".

There are some people who will be content just "being," but some of us that Creator has chosen... We have to be "broken."We have to get sick. We have to lose a job. We go through a divorce. We have to bury our spouse, parents, best friend, or our child…

In those moments of desperation, Creator is breaking us. But... when the breaking is done, then we will be able to see the reason for which we were created.

So when you see us glowing, just know that we have been broken but healed by Creator's love and pity.

Hope this helps those of you going through some difficult times. We are here to help and listen 613-761-1600

​Why is it that we have such a hard time letting go of things? Whether it’s an old friendship, a relationship that no longer works, a pair of old jeans that you haven’t worn since high school, a business that is failing, etc. We have a hard time letting go because we have attached a part of our identity to that which we are letting go of.

Our identity is made up of our personality, our life experiences, the people we interact with, etc. Some parts of our identity we are aware of and others, we are not. If you’ve attached a part of you to something, it’s hard to let yourself go.

So, what can you do. Examine why you are having trouble letting go. Take a pair of old shoes for instance with holes in them that you don’t wear anymore. Ask yourself what part of you is in your shoes. Is it the pair of shoes that you wore to win a big game? Did you spend an entire summer playing in them and having fun? Perhaps you have attached winning, play and fun to your shoes….no wonder why you don’t want to get rid of them!

Once you are aware of your attachments, you can remember the good times or the emotions and then let the physical item go.

Practice going around your house and looking at items that you never use anymore. This works especially well for clothes. See why you still have them, remember the good memories and then get rid of your new item. Observe how you feel. You will notice that as you remove old things from your life, you will feel lighter and more free.

After the initial stage of care, we begin to move into a stretch. This is not simply a physical stretch that you do like when you are doing your daily exercises, although the physical stretch does play a role.I’m often asked why we don’t start off the initial stage of care with a stretch. The reason being, when most people come into the office, their body is experiencing a lot of tension; physically, emotionally and mentally. If we stretch the tissues of the body that already have tension placed on them, what would happen? Similar to stretching the strings of a guitar past their tension point, they would snap and injury could occur. Stretching is initialised later on in care, after the nervous system has a chance to calm down and the body is no longer under high tension.Physically, the stretch reduces tension in our body, builds greater flexibility, etc. We know lots of the physical reasons why we stretch. However, that is not the main goal of our the stretch in care. In this level of care, we stretch a person’s spine and in turn their nervous system to allow them to have a more appropriate behvaiour through awareness of their emotions and range of emotions. Emotions are experienced differently in our nervous system, depending on if the energy is more feminine or more masculine. This does not have to do with males or females. We all have both feminine and masculine energy within us. Depending on the situation, we can express our energy as more feminine or more masculine and have different results. Some people also have more of one energy type in their genetic make up than the other. In individuals with more feminine energy, the stretch allows them to get ready to take action after feeling an emotion. Have you heard the expression, ‘it’s all talk’? Well, the purpose of an emotion is to get you to take an action. Anger is good, if it allows you to do something about it. But what do a lot of people do instead? They talk about it and then they release the energy before they take action on it. If you got angry and then stood up for yourself or for someone else, the energy of anger was for you to speak your voice. If you got angry and talked to your friend about how angry you were but nothing changed in your life, then there was a missed opportunity. Now, I’m not saying all actions are good, i.e. getting angry and then hitting someone, only that emotions allow you to take actions. In individuals with more masculine energy, it allows them to increase the number of emotions they experience i.e. their range of emotions, in order to change their behaviour. If you only experienced 2 motions: good and bad, then everything that happened to you would cause the reaction of good or bad. What if we introduced, loved and sadness? Then you would be able to change your reaction/ behaviour based on which emotion you felt. If when it’s bad, wouldn’t it be good to know if it was bad vs sad? Yes, because it would lead to a different behaviour. Love, satisfied, fulfilled, those emotions would lead to better responses in your body and nervous system and in turn your life. Want to increase your range of emotion or take action towards change? Give us a call 613-761-1600​

We were all born with certain senses: smell, taste, touch, sight, hearing... that we develop through our years. When one sense is compromised, i.e. you lose the ability to hear, your other senses will become heightened and more aware. This is both to make up for the lost sense and also because you practice using the other senses more when you lose one of them. Even if you temporarily lose part of your senses i.e. you are walking around in your dark house at night, you will notice that you hear noises better.Why would we want to develop our senses further? The main reason for our senses is to keep us alive and to help us navigate the world. In the animal Kingdom, their senses are honed to help them find food, shelter, water, etc. Here are some ways that you can practice developing your senses further without losing them.

Put on a blindfold and slowly move and navigate your house.

When my baby started sleeping in his own room, my husband wanted to get a baby monitor. Since the sound travels well in our house and his room is right next to ours, I decided against it. I then spent some time honing my hearing to his cry. I got so good that I could hear him a lot sooner than my husband could. I could also recognise the different cries to know if he actually needed me or if he was simply dreaming or rolling around to get himself back to sleep. Now, I can even hear him when the tv is on or when I’m in the kitchen cooking.

Want to exercise your eyes? There are many sources of eye exercises to build strength. Some people have been able to improve their eyesight enough to stop wearing their glasses.

Smell- practice by smelling food, scents, etc with your eyes closed.

Touch, again, close your eyes, feel different textures and take your time with each one. Baby toys are great for this as they have many sensory toys that have different textures.

​The November workshop was titled Overcoming Fear. Normally, when I do my monthly workshops, I usually think of them ahead of time. I create powerpoint presentations and review the content that I am presenting the day of the workshop. I like to be prepared.

One of my fears when public speaking is wondering what would happen if I had nothing to say. To circumvent this fear, I prepare ahead of time, so there’s always something to say. Now, I have been in practice for over 10 years so I no longer have to read my slides, however, I still like them there...in case.

I decided to take my workshop as an opportunity to practice overcoming a fear….so, deep breath….I decided not prepare for the workshop. I was going to wing it and see how it went.

By Monday, the day of the workshop, I was second guessing my decision...what will I say, what will they say? But, since I had a busy day, I couldn’t create a presentation even if I wanted to.

Fast forward to 6pm. 15 minutes before the presentation. The front desk staff are preparing for the workshop and they start to set up the computer and chairs. I let them know that there will be no presentation today and to put the chairs in a circle instead of their usual configuration. They smile and say, that’s different. I respond, yes, it is. I did not create a presentation today.

Fast forward to 6:15pm when workshop participants begin to arrive. This is new, Dr. Amanda. I smile and respond, yes it is. From there, we proceed to talk and discuss about our fears and how to overcome them and everything turns out great, as it always does.

I challenged my fear and won. What did you do this week to challenge a fear of yours?

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